


Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes.

by Tammany



Series: The Sussex Downs [23]
Category: Good Omens, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: And everything between., Conversations, Heaven and Hell, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 09:15:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20889713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: A shortish interlude between a mortal and a Prince of Hell.





	Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes.

Mycroft met the woman on the beach as he returned home from a walk. She was as near the ocean as she could get without soaking her feet—and then just a bit closer. The ebb and flow sent frothy bubbles up around the rubbery soles of her red high-topped sand shoes[i].

She was a little thing. Dark haired, pale eyed, with a face that could, like the cliché said, “be pretty if she would just smile.” She didn’t smile.

There were clusters of dense, chocolate brown freckles around her cheeks and eyes. Mycroft, blessed with his own cinnamon sprinkles, sympathized.

She dressed like the after-sort left when Oxfam was done with the contributions. Or like the Artful Dodger. Or like a particularly ill-kempt vampire who’d chosen to ignore his rotting tuxedo because mortal garb was such a bother…changing so often you might as well just wait it out, like a spate of bad weather. A shabby, worn suit jacket. A flurry of decorative ribbons at her throat. A scarlet sash, battered and faded…

She was…

He considered, as he continued on his walk toward her. So far he’d neither looked away from her, nor made any gesture to acknowledge her. If he chose he could comport himself as a good self-respecting Briton, nod as he passed, and say nothing. He would go on his way. Eventually she would move from where she was, in one direction or another, with one goal or another. Life would go on.

But in the meantime there was a hiatus—a moment freed from time to consider her.

She stood there, back to the sea, arms crossed, strong brows gathered in a mild scowl.

The myriad beach flies that haunted the shore circled around her, buzzing. She ignored them with nary a twitch, though they landed on her and stalked across her face. It gave Mycroft the shivers.

Her eyes were fixed on the estate next to his own—the estate he more and more thought of as “the Celestials’ place.” She didn’t look as though she were thinking particularly good things about them.

He considered some more, as he came closer.

They were, now, in some ineffable way, _his _Celestials…and he was still, in some ineffable way, The British Government. Well—The British Government (retd.). Retired and consulting. Retired, consulting, and still endowed with all the connections and levers he had accumulated over a long career in government. It could be said that, if the Celestials were Britain’s guardian angel and demon, The British Government was their guardian government. He had a responsibility.

He smiled to himself, admitting inside that the logic was pure Jabberwocky, as muddled as the hunting of the Snark. He didn’t care. It pleased him to intervene in his Celestials' defense. Especially as he had as good as reached a conclusion about the woman standing at the very edge of the surf.

“Hello,” he said, approaching. “Might I enquire of your title? Your Infernality?”

Her eyes blinked, and she turned her head a few small degrees to look at him. “Sssssssilence, mortal. Thissss isssss no bussssiness of yoursssssss.”

“I daresay it seems that way from your perspective,” he said with the polite, bureaucratic cluelessness that had served him in such good stead for so many years. People did not expect those in civil service to have so much as a crumb of a clue, and therefore civil servants could virtually always retreat into pantomime idiocy with no one even a bit the wiser. “But you see, I am Mycroft Holmes. Junior Government Liaison with Sussex, retired. A minor position but one with responsibilities. I have sworn oaths. Even signed the State Secrets Act. I can be held accountable. So I am rather afraid this may be my business, like it or not, and honestly I can think of things I would rather do on a pleasant morning in retirement than to liaise with an Infernal Power.

“I am Beelzebub, Princcccce of Hell,” she hissed. Buzzed? “Powerssssssss. Pah. Usssssselessssss little court sssssssycophantssssss, ssssssstill addicted to the ritual and pomp of Heav…” She narrowed her eyes. “That other placccccce.”

“Ah. Yes. Forgive me your Infernal High…er. Lowness?”

She nodded. The flies rocketed around her head, orbiting her like a hellish halo. “It will do. But Hell doessss not hold with frivoloussss obedienccccce to empty formssss. I am the Fallen Angel of the First Ring. FEAR ME.”

Mycroft nodded, politely. “Certainly. By all means. Read the fear in.”

Inside he was shaking…but he’d shaken before any number of slightly mad potentates and tyrants. It didn’t do to let them know—better the calm, slightly dismissive sarc covered with the best of diplomatic manners.

“And the reason for your visit, your Lowness? Economic? Territorial? Dynastic? Militaristic? I’m assuming you wish to negotiate in some way with Their Lordships Aziraphale and Crowley?”

She looked at him with dark menace. He comforted himself with her headdress: hat? Crown? Heraldic device? Whatever, it was among the more ridiculous bits of headgear he’d ever encountered: a felted fly with comic red eyes and furry pipe cleaner legs that mingled with her braided dreadlocks.

“I have come to obssserve,” she said, finally. Reluctantly.

For the first time heard a trace of something in her voice other than threat, menace, pride, and authority.

Hesitation? No… No, not that. Resentment? Perhaps a bit, but still, not right. Wistfulness?

Yes. Wistfulness and—grief.

Ah.

“Observe?” He said, softly. “Understandable. They are new stars in an old, familiar sky, aren’t they?”

Her eyes were fixed on the house above. She blinked. Blinked again, her mouth tightening.

The flies. How odd. They seemed to dissipate. Not entirely, and not far. But they retreated, no longer circling constantly, touching down, brushing her skin.

When she spoke the hiss was reduced. Almost unnoticeable.

“She. She let him return. The arrogant little cockup betrayed the plan. And he was a piss poor demon well before that. But she let him come back. She’s granted him All Earth to divide with that poncy little angel.”

There was something else there, not yet said. Something at the heart of her fascination and her pain.

Mycroft, though, nodded sympathetically. “Hard, when management promotes a subordinate over your head.”

She glanced at him, and gave a wry grin. “Promotes a superior under my head.” She actually grinned. “Hell demands a language of its own, mortal.”

“I can see that. Then you were Crowley’s…inferior?”

“Inferior. Subperior. Both will do.”

“A Prince of Hell.” He considered what Aziraphale and Crowley had told him of the missed Armageddon during evenings spent drinking fine wine and eating like kings. “That would be roughly equivalent to…”

“The Archangel Fucking Gabriel,” she said, and suddenly he felt he liked her very much, as her eyes sparkled. “Pompous git, Gabriel. But…like me, in charge of the Hosts, and of all ops for the End Times.”

“Rather out of a job now?”

She glared at him—but with a surprising lack of menace. “Armageddon is always an option, human. It. Is. Written.” The words seemed to echo, in spite of the open reaches of the beach with nothing to echo off of. Then, more softly. “It was written. Human, we did her will. We were faithful to her prophecies. Why has She forsaken us?”

Mycroft shrugged, and glanced around. “Ineffable? No—seriously. From what I have heard told, I suspect her true intent has little to do with her written intent. And…that Agnes Nutter. Her book. It does appear to have been, how shall we say: divinely inspired. I would think perhaps you and your counterpart were working on the wrong prophecy. Or perhaps a foundational prophecy necessary to support Agnes Nutter’s prophecy. Without your scripture, hers would be irrelevant. You did God’s will, you just didn’t realize it was only one stage of a larger campaign. Perhaps one that demanded individuals who would challenge God’s scriptures, while fulfilling her prophecies.”

Beelzebub sighed.

Mycroft would have sworn she fought back tears.

“Cast out of heaven. Then She makes Hell itself an afterthought. And this—” she jutted her chin in a way that seemed to indicate the whole entire world around her. “She let him come back. That posturing, bragging, fad-driven, foolish prat. She let him come back to Earth.” Her fists clenched. “She let him _love. And be loved back.”_ Her jaw set in stubborn refusal to break. “She…favors him. She…loves him.”

Ah. The heart of the matter. Literally.

“Are you sure you’re denied the same?”

She shrugged. “She placed me in Hell. She won. Who am I to defy Her now?”

The flies seemed to have left. The freckles massed along her cheeks paled and seemed less marked.

Her mouth seemed fragile…a soft pink.

“You are her faithful Prince of Hell,” Mycroft said. “You are her general, who obeyed her commands, which were written. Try, Prince of Hell. I don’t get the sense that Earth or Earth’s Guardians will reject you if you come in good faith.”

The look she gave him was such a mix of fear and hope and rejection.

“I am Lucifer’s,” she said.

“Lucifer is defeated. Yet again. And you’ve been shown another option, better than to serve in Heaven or reign in Hell.”

She made a face. “Stinking Milton. Half the book is Satan fanfic, and they go and turn it into a ‘classic.’” Then she sighed and shook her head. “You are an optimist, human. Hell has taught me more caution.”

Mycroft nodded. “Understood, your Lowness. But—think about it.”

She looked back up to the house on the downs. “Maybe.”

“Maybe,” Mycroft thought, was as good as “I will.”

He waited for any more from her, but she stood, silent, the rising waters of the incoming tide around her ankles, now, almost over her high tops.

He murmured diplomatic nothings, and continued on, heading for his own estate beyond.

The flies had not returned, he thought.

Beelzebub stood sentinel, eyes never leaving the house with the angel and the demon. The new Guardians of Earth. The lovers, beloved of God.

He would have to take this up with them, he thought. They needed to know that, in Hell, at least one demon mourned alone, and hungered for Earth’s variety, and its love. At the very least, if her Lowness came calling, he thought perhaps they should give her a hearing.

[i] I have made one change to Beelzebub's appearance in giving her the high-tops, which I longed for because they go with her red sash and the red eyes of her hat. I have also chosen to treat her sores as “regalia” she can wear or not wear, as suits her; in her scenes in Hell, she is wearing them. In her scenes on Earth, she does not appear to be. That being so, I decided she could also wear them in a reduced, more subtle form, as heavy freckles, giving me the best of both worlds.


End file.
